Top 10 Control Engineering articles, February 6 to March 7: Engineers’ Choice, servo system specification, IEC 61131-3, more

Articles about the 2016 Engineers' Choice Awards winners, what to consider when specifying a servo system, IEC 61131-3, rethinking lockout/tagout, and process models facilitating feedback control were Control Engineering’s five most clicked articles from February 6 to March 7. Miss something? You can catch up here. Also see what ranked 6-10.

The top 5 most read articles online, from Feb. 6 to Mar. 7 for Control Engineering covered the 2016 Engineers’ Choice Awards winners, what to consider when specifying a servo system, IEC 61131-3, rethinking lockout/tagout, and process models facilitating feedback control. Link to each article below. Also see what ranked 6-10 over the last month.

Although the IEC 61131-3 standard for control programming languages has been around for nearly 25 years, limited awareness of its scope and features has kept it from becoming a requirement in North America.

Automation experts already have been implementing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) architectures for years, prior to calling it IIoT; benefits of digital manufacturing including less downtime, fewer defects, energy savings, and more new product introductions, as explained by Douglas Bellin, Cisco Systems Inc.

Neural networks have been used in process control strategies for years, but they’re still not commonly found in industry. This technology has been applied in a number of fields with great success. With proper training to lift the vail from the technology, it can be more widely applied—without mystery—to solve some of the most nagging process control problems.

When we don’t learn from past mistakes, we are forced to repeat them, and true to form, it has happened again. An outsourced IT department—unaware of the manufacturing elements of IT—recently shutdown production in a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company.

Without proper grounding in a RS-422/485 installation, the user becomes vulnerable to common mode voltage transients that can compromise accurate data transfer and sensor measurements and damage equipment.

Microsoft’s extended support for Windows XP Embedded ends on January 12, 2016, and those using the system after the expiration date need to take stock of their situation with a complete system inventory to assess the systems’ support availability and where upgrades are really needed.

The list was developed using CFE Media’s web analytics for stories viewed on controleng.com, February 6 to March 7, for articles published within the last two months.